


Take

by Fluffifullness



Series: Trope Bingo Amnesty - Multifandom [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Angst, Ayakashi, Community: trope_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His back. Oh, god, his <em>back.</em> He tried not to think about it, because thinking made it worse – the pain that was like claws severing skin and muscle and twisting about inside of him, the pain of burning black and searing flame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this for trope_bingo's amnesty mini-challenge. I plan on writing fic for all nine square of one of the community cards. This satisfies the "wingfic" square.
> 
> (Also, I hope I'll able to keep this in-character. I've only seen the anime for the time being, and all...)

Natsume swallowed an agonized moan as his grip on the futon below him tightened to turn his knuckles white. His fingers felt stiff, bloodless – irrevocably frozen against his palms and the smooth-wrinkled sheets. He worked to focus on that small discomfort as bright stars of pain forced him to squeeze his eyes shut and bite back a fit of nausea.

His back. Oh, god, his _back_. He tried not to think about it, because thinking made it worse – the pain that was like claws severing skin and muscle and twisting about inside of him, the pain of burning black and searing flame. He felt something thick and cool on his skin – _blood_ , he realized with a panicked widening of his eyes – blood, it was blood, and it was staining the sheets where either of the Fujiwaras might find it or _him_ sooner or later.

He tried to shake his head – jerky, spasmodic movements that strained the muscles of his neck – to clear his head, to hear the whispers of approaching footsteps or the chipper voice of Nyanko-sensei coming home early. It felt like hours of waiting, but he did hear it eventually – that damned cat calling out to him, something about food or sake.

The voice stopped ever-so-predictably when it came near enough. Natsume took a quick, deep breath and then forced his eyes open – and there was Nyanko-sensei, mischievous eyes wide and stunned, mouth frozen halfway open.

“H-hey,” Natsume breathed, and he very nearly bit his tongue as another throbbing wave of agony rushed forth from his back to cover the rest of him. He didn’t know what else to say, really. He felt like leaving it up to sensei, because sensei knew about things like this. He’d know what was wrong and what to do – what kind of ayakashi it had been and what it was doing to Natsume now.

“You fool,” he heard, and he realized only then that he’d closed his eyes once more. Opening them, he saw Nyanko much nearer, now staring at him from mere centimeters away. “Tell me what happened.”

The teen sighed and tried in vain to look somehow put-upon. His vision blurred, his eyebrows drawn down by the weight of his suffering; he felt like screaming, not talking. “Blood,” he panted after a moment. “It hurts.”

“About the ayakashi, moron,” Nyanko-sensei snapped. “You met one, didn’t you?”

Natsume hummed a short yes. “Just – briefly. In” – he shuddered – “in the sky. Blonde hair, kind of long. The mask had the character for – agh – for ‘wing,’ I think.” He’d only caught the briefest glimpse, after all, and he wasn’t even sure that the ayakashi had seen him looking. It had been flying low over the forest, clothed in pure white, spectral silence and an unsettling sort of grace.

It was the only ayakashi he’d seen all day – the only lead he had – so he couldn’t disregard it now as he had at first. (As he often did, when an ayakashi had nothing to offer but threats or requests.)

The cat’s eyes widened further – alarmed and maybe even a little bit furious. “Have you met any others today?”

“Not that I... noticed…”

Madara cursed under his breath, closed his eyes and was instantaneously rendered huge, warm white and agile limbs. He narrowed his eyes when he noticed the damage thus far done – the black feathers sprouting from torn-up-and-bleeding skin, already maybe a quarter of a meter long and growing longer. The kid was soaked in sweat, his chest rising and falling at a feverish pace while his heart – Madara could hear it, of course – hammered away there.

“Sensei…”

The youkai quickly returned to his smaller form, waddled closer and gently prodded Natsume’s lower back with one paw. The kid hissed and buried his face in the futon. “Look at me,” Madara directed him. He did so only slowly, reluctantly, and Madara added, “You crossed a deity, Natsume. It’s called _Shirotobi_ – a capricious thing, not very well known.”

“Why’s that?” Natsume wondered at a volume that was barely above a whisper.

“Catch it on a bad day, and it’ll punish anyone who looks at it. It’s incredibly sensitive to spiritual power, which would explain why it noticed you, a human – and it must have decided to mark you.”

Natsume bit back another yelp, and – yes, Madara could taste it in the air, the blood and the ominous undercurrent coursing through the child’s body. “Mark me – what is it?”

“You mean you haven’t seen it?” Madara wondered aloud. “Hm. They’re wings. The pain’ll go away as soon as they’re done growing” – Natsume’s breath caught in his throat, panic in his eyes as he considered the ramifications – “but you won’t be entirely human after that.”

Natsume pulled his arms together and leaned onto them to raise himself into what was almost a sitting position. “Not human – sensei, I can’t – ”

“I know,” Nyanko-sensei sighed, sounding annoyed. “I’m going to go looking for it. Well, not that I can promise you much of anything, anyway. It’s probably long-gone by now.”

“Please,” Natsume murmured. “Hurry.”

“Mm,” Madara responded – and then he was gone, the window open and Natsume left to collapse and curl into a ball of breathless agony and forced silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was as if his hand might pass right through Natsume to graze the sheets that were barely visible beneath him.

It _was_ long gone, and – much as Madara would have liked to rip it to shreds for laying its hands on _his_ prey – he couldn’t help being just slightly relieved. The human child wouldn’t die from this, but Madara might not have been so fortunate.

Still, there was the transformation itself to deal with, and of course that stubborn Natsume would want to find a way back. There wasn’t much that Madara could do to help on his own – handling towels or cleaning away blood, for instance, and what a pain anyway – so he thundered a sigh and headed for the ground far below.

Fortunately, Tanuma was home already – sacked out in bed with a half-read manga open in one hand and a CD player feeding him a steady stream of guitar riffs and smooth human voices. Madara – small again, padding heavily about the house on all fours – struggled to pull himself up onto the bed beside the boy and then made himself comfortable on Tanuma’s sleeping face.

He heard first a smothered groan and then an alarmed noise before the human pulled himself upright with one hand already closed about the fuzzy cuff of Nyanko’s neck.

“P-Ponta?”

“Have a nice nap, impudent human?”

Said impudent human narrowed his eyes in irritation. “It’s not very nice to interrupt people when they’re sleeping, Ponta.” The two stared combatively at each other for another moment, and then something apparently occurred to Tanuma. He blinked, lowered his voice, and wondered, “Is Natsume in trouble or something?”

“Bingo!” Madara wrestled his way out of Tanuma’s grasp and fell with a heavy thump onto the bed before him. “Follow me,” he instructed before leaping down to the floor and then hurriedly waddling out of the room – ignoring as he did so every last attempt that the bewildered human made at understanding what was going on.

(He even attempted to pause in the kitchen for a quick snack, but an increasingly agitated Tanuma stopped him before he could find anything worth eating. The frustrated ayakashi resolved then to enjoy a feast later in exchange for the effort he’d been forced to exert thanks to this whole fiasco – not that Natsume would likely thank him for involving Tanuma in the first place.)

And Tanuma – confused, absolutely concerned – realized quickly that he was being led in the direction of Natsume’s house, so he immediately set off running with Madara struggling to keep up behind him. His breath was soon coming in short bursts – just like Natsume’s, Madara thought to himself – and his sneakers tore up the dirt and gravel of the road they followed to the warm place with people and Natsume – bleeding, hot blood and pain, _Natsume_ – waiting.

Meeting Touko-san out front – on her way out to buy some things for dinner, and are you and Takashi-kun planning on studying together? – he hastily answered that _‘yes – yes, that’s the plan’_ and forced a smile, some small talk, and a wave before heading inside and tearing up the stairs.

“Humans,” Nyanko scoffed as he trailed breathlessly along behind. He’d never entirely understood what the big deal was with letting other people in on things like this, and beyond that he didn’t know why humans felt the need to commit themselves so entirely to things like friendship and loyalty.

Not that _he_ necessarily wanted to see Natsume hurt, either.

Reaching the top step and pausing to rest for a moment, Madara noticed Tanuma standing in the open doorway of Natsume’s room. His face was turned away from the ayakashi, but he was obviously in a state of near-total shock. One of his hands clung to the smooth wood of the doorframe, fingers taut about it as if he, too, were in pain.

“Move,” Madara muttered as he brushed past the boy’s – tense, shaking slightly – legs. Natsume was exactly as Madara had left him, save for the added blood and the wings taking obvious shape behind him. They were visible even from the doorway, now – inky black, red glistening as it dripped from the long feathers.

Tanuma took one uneasy step forward. “Natsume…?”

“He’ll bleed out if you don’t hurry it up,” Nyanko pointed out. Tanuma swallowed painfully and nodded as he came near enough to lay his hands on the blonde.

“Get him to relax or something,” the cat suggested before strolling past the pair and back into the hall to gather up a few towels.

Finally realizing that he was no longer as alone as he had been, Natsume opened his eyes just slightly – just enough that he was able to recognize his friend after a moment or two of panicked breathing – and he looked positively horrified when he did.

“T-Tanuma,” he groaned.

“It’s okay, Natsume. I know.” But he didn’t apologize for getting involved – because he was never sorry, because now wasn’t the time for either of them to worry about it, anyway.

“It’s not – ”

Tanuma hushed him rather forcefully, sighed and pressed the palm of his hand awkwardly to Natsume’s more-than-damp forehead. He fought the obvious anxiety that threatened to make itself known in his expression; it was as if his hand might pass right through Natsume to graze the sheets that were barely visible beneath him.

“Touko-san was calling,” he whispered. “She didn’t…”

“She doesn’t… _suspect_ anything,” Tanuma reassured him haltingly. He sighed – maybe Natsume had a fever or maybe he was just in too much pain to regulate his own body temperature. He couldn’t tell, really, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wouldn’t be able to feel the heat at all before too long.

“Is there anything I can do?” Asking as bluntly as that, he sounded far more confident than he felt.

Natsume winced. “Sorry,” he breathed. “I’m okay.”

Tanuma started to protest – _no, you’re not, I’ve never seen_ anyone _in this much pain_ – but Madara chose that moment to return, dragging a sizable stack of white fabric along with him.

“Are you two going to make googly eyes at each other all day, or do you plan on helping me with these?”

Tanuma gave a little start, then sighed as he rose to his feet and carried a few towels back over to Natsume. The blonde’s eyes followed his movements, his brow furrowed by concern and pain.

“Sensei,” he breathed, and his light brown eyes were so closely framed by the thick black of his eyelashes that Tanuma had to wonder just how much Natsume was even able to make out like that - not a lot, but his vision was blurring plenty, anyway. “Is this okay? It’s not – contagious, or anything?”

“Of course not, idiot. Even I wouldn’t bring a weakling into that kind of situation!”

“Weakling?” Tanuma laughed softly as he reached around to dab gingerly at the blood – so much, too much – that was soaking his friend’s back and the futon beneath him. “That’s a bit harsh…”

Natsume bit his lower lip and squeezed his eyes shut. He’d wanted to smile, he had, but the attempt had faltered before becoming even remotely apparent. “I-it hurts,” he admitted almost under his breath. “It hurts…”

“Can’t we give him something – I mean, are we just supposed to sit here and wait for something to fix itself?” Tanuma was staring hard at Madara, his expression verging on belligerent. “What happened?”

“N-nothing,” Natsume insisted quickly. “It’s… too late, anyway, right?” That was directed at Nyanko – and it _was_ too late, but Natsume had never been one to acknowledge futility when he saw it. The cat hesitated because of that – because that part of Natsume had always been indelible, human.

“Yes, it is,” he said after a moment – and to a bewildered Tanuma he briefly explained the situation. The _Shirotobi_ , their brief encounter, the wings – and, he added, “Even _you_ probably won’t be able to see him well for much longer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thinking I'll probably wind up adjusting the relationship tag and category to Tanuma/Natsume, M/M... (I mean, I _am_ writing this for the gen card, but that doesn't mean that the fic itself has to actually be gen. Just hope no one has a problem with that potentially changing. ^.^)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not Taki, not Tanuma or the Fujiwaras or anyone at school, but Natsume.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a long, long time it's been! Sorry about that. :)

“What’s that supposed to mean, Ponta?”

Tanuma could see the total comprehension in Natsume’s eyes even as those few words spilled anxiously into open air. His expression was just as melancholic as it was resigned, and that only served to remind Tanuma of past experiences with his friend – always the martyr, always hiding everything that hurt him. It was unfair and frustrating and completely inappropriate in this situation.

“Please,” he insisted. “I can’t help if neither of you will tell me the whole truth.”

Natsume shuddered briefly as another burst of pain shook him from head to toe. In the moments after that, his breathing gradually slowed enough that he was able to whisper an explanation.

“Y-yeah,” he breathed. “What sensei means is…” He hesitated once more, then –

“I’m becoming an ayakashi.”

Said quickly to lessen its impact and the way it tore itself from Natsume like another scream - a cry for _help,_ but it’s never that simple, you don’t _understand -_  the statement was just that much more shocking. Tanuma couldn’t resist the urge to imagine that he had somehow heard it wrong. “…But you’re a human,” he protested dumbly.

Something inside of him twisted painfully when he saw that Natsume’s only response was an apologetic smile.

“I – I’ll call Taki, then,” he murmured. “She can draw one of her circles…”

“Tanuma,” Natsume groaned, “sorry, but please don’t.”

“We have to fix this!” Tanuma insisted, his fingers curling into fists at his sides.

Natsume winced – whether it was because of the pain or because of his friend’s belligerence, the other couldn’t tell – but he still managed to shake his head shortly. “It’s – ”

“Dangerous, right?” Tanuma swept the soft fluff of a fresh towel across Natsume’s forehead and watched as concern widened his friend’s eyes. He would have liked to chide Natsume for forgetting that they’d been over this before. He wanted to remind him of his penchant for overestimating the strength of the danger that he apparently saw in every facet of his secret life.

He didn’t, though, because Natsume looked so absolutely like he wouldn’t listen anyway. So convinced that his fears were justified, that he couldn’t so much as begin to rely on anyone but himself and his so-called bodyguard.

Frustrated, Tanuma turned to Ponta for support. The cat-like creature blinked disinterestedly up at him, its expression as mischievous as ever, and it looked just as if it had no intention of speaking until – “Just ignore this idiot. The pain must be going to his head.”

“Hey – ”

“Alright,” Tanuma responded as he rose to his feet.

He nodded apologetically at Natsume before leaving the room.

 

Taki’s gentle knock at the front door was immediately met with a hasty answer by Tanuma. The smallest hint of relief showed in his eyes when he recognized her, but his face remained pale and drawn and his legs shook as he led her tensely up the stairs and into Natsume’s room.

There was no one there – just an empty futon, a mess of sheets and –

And was that blood?

Taki shifted uncomfortably, looked around and spotted Natsume’s fat cat siting by the window – and she would have swept the adorable thing up into a hug, she would’ve, but she was too preoccupied by what Tanuma had told her, by the panic he’d been in and the way he looked now…

“Isn’t Natsume-kun here?” she wondered aloud.

Tanuma nodded behind her. She caught the motion in the periphery of her vision and turned to hear him say, “I can still see him… a bit.”

“Oh,” she realized. “Oh, right…”

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Tanuma had told her everything over the phone, and she’d had plenty of time to contemplate it on her way over here. Natsume was becoming one of the beings that only he could see – _only_ him. Not Taki, not Tanuma or the Fujiwaras or anyone at school, but Natsume.

Taki hadn’t entirely registered the reality of that. Becoming an ayakashi meant invisibility. It meant being alone and unable to continue a normal life for as long as it lasted.

The thought stung more than Taki had expected it to. She steeled herself as best she could, though, and drew the circle immediately and as carefully as she could in her hurry to get it done. Her hand shook so much that the chalk she’d carried along with her kept breaking at the tip, leaving fine grains of white powder at the lines’ edges.

“Okay,” she murmured after a moment, and Tanuma sighed softly. His gaze was fixed on a space just to the right of the pattern’s outermost edge. He looked insistent – apologetic but unyielding. Taki could guess who he was looking at and what was running through both their minds.

“Don’t worry,” she pleaded, hands outstretched as if she could somehow offer Natsume tangible reassurance. “We want to help.”

Tanuma nodded and sighed softly as he took a deliberate step forward - a warning, a please-just-help-us-help-you, _you stubborn idiot_.

“Natsume…”

Silence hung like fine spider-web threads in the air, then. No one dared to move or breathe any more than that. Even the cat sat with its eyes fixed on what might have been little more than a vague outline to Tanuma. It was so outwardly detached, yet something about it seemed to emanate the same bemused concern that the other two felt.

And then there was Natsume, eyes wide and scared as he stumbled awkwardly to his feet and into the broad center of the pattern on the floor, his balance upset by the weight of – 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _As if in flight,_ he thought numbly.

Wings. Tanuma exhaled softly, slowly, and hoped that Natsume couldn’t read the shock on his face. It had been odd enough, seeing them as they’d been before, but now they were really a _part_ of his friend – actual limbs, a force that defined him as something not-human. They were huge, dark – like two sleek shadows that probably would have extended past Natsume’s fingers with his arms outstretched.

 _As if in flight,_ he thought numbly.

“Does it still hurt?” he heard himself murmur.

“No…”

“They look really – really, _really_ cool, Natsume-kun!”

Taki had that look about her – the one that oozed adoration, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks and hands clasped on her chest. The boys were fairly accustomed to it, but Natsume wasn’t often the one receiving the attention. He looked… well, like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

He settled, after a moment, on taking an unsteady step back – a bad idea, apparently, for he immediately lost his balance and fell with a heavy thump onto the tatami below. His wings jerked outward as the impact jarred their owner, fluttered a little and then folded about his upper body.

It was almost as if they were acting on a reflex to protect him.

“Ow,” the boy complained under his breath. Tanuma grinned in spite of himself and moved forward to offer his friend a hand. Reflexes, maybe, already – as if Natsume’d always had them, as if his body, at least, felt that way – but he was still Natsume.

“You okay?” he wondered. The teen only nodded, accepting without complaint the offered help. “Can you move those?”

“I don’t know,” Natsume admitted. “They feel… weird.”

As if on cue, the wings fluttered again, just once – more like a shiver, really, as if he were cold or even more uneasy than he looked to Tanuma. The feathers sounded like they were whispering something, like the words of the wind twisting its way through branches and dry-paper leaves.

Taki giggled, but there was a hint of something else in the rise and fall of her voice. “That’s understandable…”

Natsume smiled hesitantly. “I… yeah. Thanks for coming” – bowing his head so that his eyes were less visible – “but I think I’ll be fine on my own.”

“No way,” Taki insisted with a sudden forcefulness. “What kind of friends would we be if we left just like that? Don’t you need someone to cover for you?”

“Nyanko-sensei can do that,” Natsume reassured them with a smile that could only have been forced. “It’d be better if you didn’t get too involved for now.”

“Not for you, it wouldn’t,” Tanuma sighed. “We’ll help you look for that youkai – Natsume?”

The teen shook his head and cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Ah – y-yeah. Fine…”

“Feeling sick?”

“No, just – weird,” he reiterated. “They’re heavy.”

Ponta huffed impatiently and waddled over to the group of teens. “You – weakling.”

Tanuma blinked and waited a moment before raising a finger to point hesitantly at himself. “Me?”

The cat stared back at him. “You’d be better off leaving, after all.”

“You’re the one who called me here to begin with!” Tanuma protested.

“This brat was complaining too much about the pain,” Ponta explained, and from there – ignoring, of course, Natsume’s scandalized protests – he was very to the point. “He’s fine now, but _you_ won’t be if you stick around. His spiritual power is too much for a wimp like you to handle.”

Natsume’s?

It made a little too much sense, actually. Natsume as a human had always had a great deal of that energy, after all, and there was no way that would’ve diminished as a result of this…

“Please,” Natsume murmured. “I appreciate the thought and everything, but if that’s how it is – look, if being near me might hurt you – and we don’t know how long it might take to find a solution…”

“But,” Taki wondered, “don’t you want to go back to being human as soon as possible? We can help – ”

“What do you expect to accomplish – two little human kids? Hm?” Madara watched them both for a moment. “I’ll take care of this idiot, so you run along home.”

Tanuma let his hands curl into fists. He was shaking a little, frustrated more than anything and not about to leave his friend alone with this fat alcoholic of a cat. There were still flecks of blood dotting the white of his shirt, the sheets and the futon and he looked vaguely sick even now. He couldn’t be as fine as he claimed to be, not after being injected with something – a curse, maybe, or perhaps it was something else entirely – and changing into an entirely different species.

It was so extreme that it actually sounded _funny_ out of context.

“It’s not that big a deal,” he insisted. “I can deal with a little headache, Natsume. And how else do you expect any of this to hurt us? Aren’t you the one suffering the most here?”

“I – I know – ”

Tanuma shook his head, never stopping to calm down even as Taki rested a warning hand on his shoulder. “You’re too stubborn! You need help, and we can offer you that in our own way! I don’t want to make things harder for you, but that’s because you do it enough on your own…!”

He paused to catch his breath, to take in the widening of Natsume’s eyes and the sharp inclination of his head.

“We’re friends,” he added at length. “You’d do the same for us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to realize just how lacking my knowledge of canon actually is in spots. If I make any _really_ bad errors, please let me know so that I can go back and fix them. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wanted so badly to feel human.

The agreement they all eventually reached involved Natsume joining Tanuma at his place – Madara, too, and Tanuma smoothed things over with the Fujiwaras so that a semi-reluctant, very confused Touko bade Natsume farewell from behind closed doors.

Taki went with them at first, talked and laughed and lightened the mood for the friend she couldn’t even see. She was rarely quiet, always holding “Natsume-kun’s kitty” and gushing over the writhing lump’s supposed cuteness. When they finally reached Tanuma’s place, she drew several more circles – none of them terribly inconspicuous, but it would have to do – and then lingered hesitantly by the door.

“Will you two really be alright on your own?” she wondered.

Tanuma smiled, nodded and said, “Yeah. We have school off tomorrow, so we can all figure out what to do then.”

Beside them, Natsume clenched his hands into fists as a little thrill of fear ran up and down his spine before settling in his stomach. He wanted to warn them against doing anything like that, but at best Tanuma might hear a muted echo of words literally shouted at him.

Why hadn’t Taki drawn a circle _here,_ too?

“Ah, I’d almost forgotten,” Taki mused, and now she looked a bit calmer. “Well, then – it’s pretty late already, isn’t it? I should probably head back now.”

“Want me to go with you?” Tanuma asked, and Natsume stifled a laugh – not that it was necessary, of course, but the action was almost automatic. He couldn’t help assuming that his friends could be sure he was there, that they could hear him teasing Tanuma for being such a gentleman.

He wanted so badly to feel human.

“No, that’s fine,” Taki responded with another warm smile. She knelt directly in front of Natsume, then, and for a moment he honestly _hoped –_

“Goodbye, kitty,” she said with a little wave. “See you next time!”

Nyanko-sensei scoffed at the unwanted attention, but Taki only smiled wider at the creature’s antics. At the same time, though, Natsume could feel his own expression turning vaguely melancholic. He loved moments like this, after all, and now he was little better than an outsider. The feeling was unnervingly familiar. It was something he’d thought he’d put behind him a long time ago.

Straightening up, Taki smiled again. Her gaze missed Natsume by a good foot or so, but her next words were directed at him.

“See you later, Natsume-kun. Hang in there, okay?”

He hesitated for a long moment, then nodded and smiled gratefully and waved as she turned to go.

“Thanks,” he murmured. “Until tomorrow, then.”

 

Back inside, Tanuma was quick to change into an old pair of sweats and a T-shirt. He offered to lend his friend something, too, but Natsume refused. His shirt was still the same blood-stained white one, of course, but that was fine with him. It wasn’t as if he had to worry about anyone seeing it, and for him to wear anything of Tanuma’s would’ve required ripping two pretty sizable holes in the back.

Tanuma guessed the course of Natsume’s train of thought pretty easily.

“I don’t mind, really,” he insisted. “I have plenty that I don’t wear much anymore.”

Natsume smiled, holding up one hand as if to keep his friend at bay. “I appreciate the offer,” he explained, “but these are fine.” He indicated his clothes as he spoke; Tanuma’s gaze followed the sweep of his hand.

“Alright,” he sighed. “What about food, then?”

Natsume’s smile immediately became forced, tensed at the corners and slanted eyebrows, all of which he could feel and do nothing about. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Tanuma looked vaguely surprised. “You sure? I was going to eat something, anyway, so you might as well.”

Natsume nodded. “That’s – fine, but I’m kinda… I guess I’m not hungry.”

“Makes sense,” Nyanko-sensei finally piped up. “Some youkai don’t require nearly as much sustenance as others.”

Tanuma’s attention flickered over to the fat little creature – halfway through stuffing an onigiri into its mouth – and he smiled scornfully. “Others – y’mean like you?”

Nyanko-sensei bristled. “Why you – impudent little –!”

Natsume laughed under his breath as his friend nursed a Nyanko-induced bump on the back of his head. It made him feel better, seeing them act the way they always did. It was a comfortable routine – things like this.

“I can try,” he offered. “To eat something, I mean.”

Tanuma glanced back up at him, smiled. “Good. We might not have a lot of options, but I’m sure we can find something you’ll like.”

They left the room, then - no circles in the hallway, either, so of course Natsume was again reunited with the invisibility that was already beginning to wear on him. He followed Tanuma closely, even dared to touch the back of his hand as he turned into the kitchen - but his friend only shivered at the contact. As if it hurt, and - well, it probably did. It probably felt wrong to him - wrong like not human, wrong like cold energy and something heavy and dark and dangerous - 

"Sorry," Tanuma murmured, suddenly interrupting the increasingly negative spiral of Natsume's thoughts. "I meant it when I said I'd be fine. Thanks for giving this a chance, Natsume."

He even _smiled,_ and Natsume honestly didn't know whether he should be happy or terrified right then.

Grateful, maybe. Grateful felt right.

Nyanko-sensei trotted along behind them, watched the exchange with a half-interested sort of amusement and then saw fit to interrupt the pair. “Or maybe,” he began, “you’d do better with a nice, juicy human – ”

A startled, slightly angry Natsume shut him up with a well-aimed punch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late _and_ short, right?  I'm sorry~!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And if it didn’t – if it didn’t, maybe it'd be fine as long as no one was seriously hurt –

“Should we stop?” Taki wondered breathlessly as Tanuma stumbled again – this time over an exceptionally thick tree root, but of course the size wasn’t really the problem.

He was just exhausted, and Natsume couldn’t help fretting over the probability that _he_ was directly responsible for that. He’d had a hard time sleeping, himself, but he was pretty sure that Tanuma’s night had bested his on that front, too. He’d been able to hear his friend’s irregular breathing and the near-silent groans of discomfort as he repeatedly reached up to press his palm to the same spot on his forehead – again and again and again.

Headaches…

“I’m fine,” Tanuma grunted dismissively as he righted himself and took another step forward. “Natsume?”

Natsume glanced up – hadn’t realized he’d been looking down to begin with – and saw Tanuma’s gaze fixed squarely on him.

He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable with anything less than total invisibility.

“Don’t make a big deal out of nothing.”

Natsume gritted his teeth impatiently. “But you’re getting hurt…”

Tanuma didn’t respond, of course, but he did smile – probably heard something like a voice even if he couldn’t begin to make out the words – and then he offered Natsume his hand.

Natsume didn’t take it. He couldn’t, not because Tanuma wouldn’t feel it but because he _would._ Because it would probably hurt him more, and he’d clearly taken on too great a burden already. They’d only been searching for a few hours – two or three at most – and while the strain was starting to show a little in Taki – and Natsume could feel it, too, of course – Tanuma was already a mess.

He’d been starting to think that things would work out, after all, that his friends would be fine and that he would, too.

He couldn’t keep that optimism going so easily now, though – not in the face of no results and Tanuma suffering, Taki’s parents worried and Nyanko-sensei out on a search that would likely yield just as much nothing…

Natsume didn’t want to see them all disappointed when things didn’t work out.

“I’m starting to feel like an outsider over here,” Taki interrupted with an effortless brightness that – _again_ – totally trumped every one of Natsume’s pessimistic thoughts. “Did you hear Natsume-kun talking that time?”

She glanced down at Tanuma’s still-outstretched hand. “Can you feel anything?”

“No… Sorry,” Tanuma admitted. He glanced back at Natsume, smiled apologetically and Natsume could see now how obviously his eyes looked straight through him. He was seeing something, maybe, but it probably could’ve been anything. Didn’t have to be Natsume at all, and how hard would it’ve been for him to just slip away right then?

There was just one thing. If Tanuma couldn’t actually detect even the faintest hint of a syllable or facial expression, then his responses to whatever Natsume happened to be feeling could only have been the result of his knowing the blonde well enough not to need those hints.

It was kinda unnerving, but at the same time Natsume couldn’t help appreciating it – just a little.

That appreciation, gratitude – _trust,_ even – it was what kept Natsume by his friends’ side despite every misgiving he couldn’t help having. He still hadn’t decided what it was to him in this situation – a lifeline _or a chain and it’ll keep me from saving them, hurt them drag them down with me –_

“I’ll keep doing my best, though,” Tanuma promised, then, and now his smile was verging on overconfident, “so you should do the same, too – Natsume.”

Natsume felt his eyes go wide all over again, wings obstinately heavy and he smiled hesitantly back –

– but no promises just yet.

 

Madara found them not long after that little exchange – Tanuma looking worse than ever, Natsume frustrated and uncertain and just about ready to see his friends taken back to their respective homes. Taki was a little beyond surprised when Natsume’s fat cat appeared out of nowhere, but her immediate response was to sweep it into her arms for a stranglehold – or a hug, maybe, but she could have fooled any one of the bystanders.

After the obligatory struggling, long-winded insults on Madara’s part and an eventual release, the cat was able to get right down to business.

“I asked some small fry,” he explained as apathetically as he apparently could, “but none of ‘em knew anything. There’s no sign of your little friend, either, Natsume.”

Natsume nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess – that’s to be expected, isn’t it?”

“What’s he saying?” Tanuma asked, and in the undertone of his voice was a definite note of urgency.

“That he expected as much,” Madara translated with a short yawn. “Little punk’s not as eager as the two of you, apparently.”

Natsume bristled. “Don’t tell them that!”

He hadn’t meant to move them, but his wings fluttered angrily as he shouted – like a second voice, he thought, like a cat’s ears lying down or a dog’s tail wagging.

He suddenly felt sick.

“Oi – Natsume.”

“Sorry, Sensei, I – I don’t have much time left, do I?” The weight of the feathers on his back was almost too much, now, and he found himself on his knees before he’d even finished his sentence.

He was getting too used to it, was becoming more and more youkai, less and less human…

Tanuma apparently noticed his friend’s distress – or, at the very least, his collapse – because he, too, got down on one knee just a short distance away, concerned frown and his voice raised to ask Nyanko-sensei for some kind of explanation. Taki was also there in seconds flat or less, and her hand searching for Natsume just missed the short sleeve of his red-on-white shirt.

They were calling to him, comforting him without knowing exactly what the problem was – and then they did, Nyanko explained and added a bit of his own information – that it’d just keep getting worse, that given more than another day or two Natsume would probably be absolutely and completely stuck the way he was now.

“Would you shut your idiot mouths for just a few minutes?!” Madara cried after several loud moments of scattered exclamations and shocked demands for help advice anything _isn’t there anything we can do?_ He even managed to land a few successful blows before Tanuma caught him in a daze and held him suspended in mid-air, writhing and jiggling and righteous fury.

“What else can we do?” he demanded. “Where else can we look?”

“Even I’m not omniscient,” Madara complained. “If you honestly think that it’ll accomplish anything, please feel free to explore the woods more like you’ve been doing. Don’t expect much, though. I’ll continue to ask around, anyway – but I expect a food reward later – no, lots!”

Natsume forced a smile – for whom, he didn’t know – and then looked to Nyanko-sensei. “Could you ask them to draw another circle?” he wondered quietly. “And tell them… Tell them not to worry. It’ll work out.”

And if it didn’t – if it didn’t, maybe it'd be fine as long as no one was seriously hurt –

“Jeez,” Nyanko scoffed at his charge. “You just don’t get it, do you, you little fool? These two morons seem to believe that they’ll be hurt just as badly as you if things don’t go back to normal. They may have no plan or strength to speak of, but do consider thinking before you speak once in a while! Honestly – like a broken record…!”

Natsume blinked.

He was – he was, but he _had_ to –

“Are you still talking about things like that, Natsume-kun?” Taki exclaimed, all wide eyes and betrayal.

“Natsume,” Tanuma sighed. “Please…”

“But – ”

“Think of it this way,” Nyanko suggested. “Say you remain in that form for the rest of your life.”

Natsume cringed, nodded, and he knew what was coming. He’d thought about it already, lost sleep imagining and worrying and attempting to forge some sort of compromise with himself.

“Do you expect these two to stick around drawing magic circles for you all the time?”

Tanuma said nothing. Taki said nothing. Just looked surprised, like they honestly hadn’t thought about it, too – the inevitable separation, the eventual forgetting – everything, and the look in their eyes said only that they were waiting for an answer.

“Sensei,” Natsume whispered. “Promise me you’ll keep them safe.”

The cat huffed and turned his back to the three of them. “I have no use for the human friends of a youkai such as yourself.”

“No, I mean – ”

“Natsume,” Tanuma grunted. “If I could hit you right now, know what? I’d do it.”

“Tanuma, I – ”

“You’re supposed to understand. You were starting to, weren’t you? That this – ”

_That friends are supposed to rely on each other just as easily as they share secrets with them._

Natsume knew, he understood and – yeah, he’d been getting used to it for a long time now. He’d been in some sort of comfort zone then, though, and this was alien even to him. It made everything harder, made things twisted and wrong and dangerous. It made him doubt everything he’d been starting to accept, and even as he understood his friends’ frustration he could hardly bring himself to accept the pain he was putting Tanuma through, the stress and who knew what might happen to them if they ever did find anything?

But – he understood.

Natsume sighed, took another deep breath and then yelled as loud as his voice would let him – louder than he ever had, and while Nyanko-sensei cringed and looked nothing if not a little scared, his friend only widened his eyes – and then smiled.

_Help me – please._

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Okay, so this is important.**
> 
> I'm trying very, _very_ hard to finish - or to come close to finishing - four ongoing stories before I go on an extended no-Internet trip on June 22nd. If I wind up not updating this before then, I'm _really really sorry,_ but I absolutely won't be able to come back to it until after July 13th (the last day of the class I'm taking).
> 
> I'm doing my best, but life is a busy thing. ^^ I can definitely guarantee that this story will be completed, but there may be a pretty sizable gap there during which I won't be able to do anything.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, though, guys! I'm so happy that this fic's been so well-received and everything. :D


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’d tried so hard, after all, bled the day away and come just a little closer to something that wasn’t quite the point – but close enough, maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been approximately 2.5 months since I last posted an update here, and I have no real explanation to give y'all for that. I apologize! My updates won't be as frequent as I'd like them to be even now, but I was never planning on dropping this. If you've waited all this time and still _care,_ you have no idea how much I appreciate you!
> 
> ~~Now let's just hope that the long break hasn't made it too impossible for me to keep writing this _well._~~

Natsume’s friends were really quite persistent – or, at least, that was what every other youkai deemed it appropriate to tell him – again and again, the same general meaning and he heard it a lot because the four of them wound up continuing their search well into the evening hours. Apparently, his situation was becoming well-known to the various inhabitants of the forests surrounding their town. That didn’t exactly bother him, of course, but maybe it wasn’t entirely comfortable, either.

He’d never liked receiving a lot of attention from anyone, after all – too much pressure, judgment in the case of humans and then _hurt._

Neglect might’ve been worse, though, because that meant loneliness. It meant worrying about being forgotten after death, which meant really disappearing – and where was the point in living at all if you were just going to disappear without accomplishing anything that might last?

Natsume occupied himself with thoughts like that – fleeting, vague ones and the memories they always liked to call up – and all the while Tanuma never stopped talking. Sometimes he was mostly just muttering to himself about where he should look, what he should find a way to research later and the youkai that he was almost capable of seeing – and sometimes there weren’t any youkai at all, just an actual shadow or a leaf carried by the occasional breeze.

Of course, Tanuma probably knew that, too, but that was how Natsume could tell that his friend was worrying about him.

Maybe it was that he didn’t want him to suffer from that old sense of pointlessness – maybe.

And maybe that was why Natsume couldn’t see any of it as even slightly meaningless – not even when they were forced to return empty-handed, tired and footsore and promising to do research, promising that everything would work out and _don’t worry, Natsume-kun – there’s got to be_ something _we can do!_

He had, at the very least, managed to admit something to himself and to his friends. That stepping up to ask for help – an honest _request_ – had felt wrong and too demanding and it was dangerous but it was _progress._

He didn’t have the nerve to worry about whatever progress they _hadn’t_ quite managed to make.

They’d tried so hard, after all, bled the day away and come just a little closer to something that wasn’t quite the point – but close enough, maybe.

 

“We still have time,” Tanuma murmured to the pale wall before which he was busy changing into a fresh set of clothes – clothes that weren’t dusty and torn in places by an infinite array of sharp twigs and spines and falling-down clumsiness, clothes that wouldn’t worry his father when Tanuma went to join him for dinner.

Natsume was sitting on the floor by his friend’s bed, not at all far away and now very devotedly staring off to one side, lest Tanuma should notice him watching from his place in the dead-center of Taki’s youkai circle.

Nyanko-sensei had agreed to return to the Fujiwaras to pose as Natsume – and Taki’s reaction to that transformation had been almost funnily dramatic, as commonplace as it seemed to Natsume and as obviously strange as it should have been to anyone else. He’d teased his bodyguard about it, too: _“Looks like even you’re capable of impressing at least one person, right, Sensei?”_

Thinking about it now, Natsume smiled faintly. He’d spent most of his time since then worrying about how tired he should have been but wasn’t, how light he felt despite the weight settling on his chest and how little he’d noticed the presence of his wings even over the course of a day as long as this one had been. He’d caught himself wondering about what it might feel like to fly more than once, found himself flexing the strange muscles and noticing how the new limbs reacted to his direction.

He’d stopped himself every time, of course, because to acknowledge it like that felt distinctly wrong to the part of him that was still completely human.

“Natsume?”

“T-Tanuma – what’s wrong?”

Tanuma frowned suddenly, sighed and then smiled wearily. “Responding like that… doesn’t it sound kind of pessimistic to you?”

“Ah – um, yeah, you might be right,” Natsume agreed with an achingly hesitant grin. He wasn’t sure, though, not really – well, it was probably that he’d jumped to the immediate conclusion that it was ‘something wrong’ and not just a simple question, but for that alone to be dark-sounding enough that Tanuma’d want to say something about it…

“Oh,” Natsume realized, surprising Tanuma with the quick widening of his eyes – the coming to life.

(He’d probably been looking depressed since the moment Tanuma managed to catch sight of him again…)

“I’m not too upset or anything, though,” he reassured Tanuma. “I mean – I’m really fine. It’s just a bad habit.”

The line of Tanuma’s mouth softened slightly before turning into an awkward smile. He even laughed, quick and soft and regretting the jumped-to conclusion. It should have all looked and sounded forced, but to Natsume it felt real enough.

“Sorry,” he murmured, scratching at the back of his head – thick, dark hair, the kind that Natsume used to wish he had, the kind that would have let a person fit in better than the dusty almost-blonde that he’d always sported – as he turned to sit across from his friend with his legs crossed beneath him. “Guess I’m a little on-edge, myself,” Tanuma admitted, rough grin still in place as he leaned close to wonder at the strange picture Natsume made.

They were still, for now – the wings, of course, and the empty whisper of air moving through his feathers. There was still light bouncing off of them, though, so that Natsume felt entirely too conspicuous there in the middle of a room into which Tanuma’s father could step at any moment.

(And still it wasn’t that he’d forgotten the other light feeling, the one from before that meant hope and the close comfort of friendship – it was just that he worried, that anyone would worry and he _should_ have been bothered by things like this. Because he cared about what he and his friends were fighting for, because he wanted to be human and because he still couldn’t entirely trust himself not to passively take what was handed to him.)

“They don’t hurt anymore,” Natsume whispered, and he let his gaze skitter off to rest in a corner as he added, “like I’m getting used to them. I mean – actually, I guess I already have…”

“Isn’t that better for now?” Tanuma questioned. “At least, better than having to deal with pain – right?”

Natsume couldn’t hide his surprise then. Wide-eyed with his breath coming just a little faster and a weird, throbbing heat threatening to redden his cheeks, he wondered, “Doesn’t it worry you? Remember, Sensei said –”

“Wait,” Tanuma interrupted, hand quickly raised to silence Natsume. “Don’t. That’s what I meant.”

Natsume had to take a moment to understand – the threatening things, the heavy cloud that meant thinking of all the bad and none of the good.

He could do so much more, and to preface that he began with a smile.

“Right,” he agreed, slow sigh and Tanuma watching him dubiously, pondering what he might be about to say and whether it’d really be any different from anything else Natsume had been insisting on up to that point –

“It’ll work out fine, won’t it?”

Tanuma didn’t say anything for another minute after that – just stared at Natsume and Natsume stared back, blushing a little and hoping that what he felt and what he’d said had lined up at least close to as much as he’d felt it had.

What he wouldn’t’ve given to be as eloquent as everyone else he’d ever met, Tanuma maybe excluded…

His friend’s ensuing response caught Natsume off guard again, of course. He’d been anticipating another moment of silence only because it had gone on for so long by then, but – well, and what he did wind up saying out of the blue was so completely unrelated that he was sure he’d misunderstood –

“Wanna take a bath, then? We have plenty of towels, soap” – Tanuma’s smile widened, then, and he pleaded with his eyes as they traced the darkening curves of bloodstains and wrinkles marring what had at one time been a flawlessly white shirt – “clothes, too.”

Natsume hesitated. “Your dad – wouldn’t he think it’s weird for you to go to all that trouble for nothing? If he can’t see me –”

Tanuma shook his head, smiled. “It’s fine. I’ll just take one after you.”

Natsume almost argued once more – that these clothes were fine, that he could at least wash them in the bath and that not too many people would have to see them, anyway – and he still saw it as an imposition besides, an extra burden placed on someone who was already doing too much to help –

– until he realized that this was Tanuma hoping, Tanuma wanting an indirect affirmation of the trust they both held in Natsume’s words – that it’d be okay, that normal things like this were fine and that they’d be able to keep it up because Natsume was, after all, just a human…

“Okay,” he breathed, happy tears threatening and a shaky smile built on uncertain hope, eager reassurances and this – comfort in belonging. “I guess – I could use one.”

Tomorrow would be a long day, too, after all.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He stepped forward, he saw it fall – and then he was running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been more than two months. I am so. I am sorry. _Lo siento._

Ponta was all but hysterical; frustrated, incredulous and impatient, he seemed ready to blow at any minute. It was a funny look on him, though – of course, given that he’d always been pig-like and apparently harmless even at the worst of times. It didn’t invalidate his point, but it made it hard to take it seriously without first pausing to appreciate the spectacle he never failed to make of himself.

“Idiot!” he roared (squawked). “Only a few hours left to fix what _you_ broke, and you’ve been making a _conscious effort_ not to move them?!”

Natsume, the natural object of his sensei’s current fit of rage, only half-smiled and shrugged in a manner that easily verged on apathetic.

“Don’t give me that look, fool! Did you ever once stop to think that you might be able to make yourself at least half as useful as me?!”

“Sensei, what –”

“Oh,” Tanuma realized, a bit late but still, apparently, well before Natsume.

“What?” Taki wondered. She was sitting a short distance away from the rest of them, light warm-brown hair swishing about her face as she looked around for an explanation. “Isn’t it enough for Natsume-kun to be trying in his own way?”

“Not when he could –”

“Fly,” Natsume breathed, and then returned his attention to the fat cat on the floor. “But I – I can’t do that, Sensei. Sorry.”

Ponta squinted up at him, but otherwise said nothing.

To Tanuma and Taki’s mutual surprise, Natsume didn’t wait for someone to prompt words out of him. He scooted a little closer to the others – still within his circle, of course – and sighed almost inaudibly before saying, “Well, wouldn’t it be almost the same as accepting it? The youkai blood –”

“Idiot,” Nyanko-sensei spat, simultaneously silencing Natsume and startling the other two. “It doesn’t work that way. What a human put in your situation thinks and feels matters very little. Nothing you yourself do is likely to speed the curse up _or_ slow it down. In fact,” he huffed, “insisting that you not give up hope is little better than a token gesture, anyway. Honestly… humans are such strange creatures…”

Natsume blinked down at Nyanko-sensei for one beat, two – and then he smiled, the honestly amused expression he liked to wear when he was close to teasing someone. “I see…” He shuffled to his feet, then nodded thoughtfully and said, “I guess I can at least try – knowing that even Nyanko-sensei’s worried about it.”

“Get it over with quickly,” Ponta snapped, bristling at having been read wrong – or maybe too accurately, actually, but Tanuma couldn’t be completely sure either way.

 

The fat cat disappeared soon after that to make another attempt at searching the surrounding forests. Natsume stayed behind with the other two – and Taki said that there was research she could be doing back home, so within just under an hour the small crowd was reduced to just the two of them, Natsume and Tanuma.

Tanuma breathed a long sigh, but he was still smiling faintly. “Guess I’m not exactly the most useful one here, huh?”

“It’s fine,” Natsume shrugged, returning the smile. “You’ve already done a lot.”

Tanuma chuckled, his gaze fixed on the floor at his feet. Natsume’s wings twitched nervously – gently but hard enough that a single feather loosed itself and seemed almost to disappear beyond the farthest edge of the circle. Tanuma tried to follow its path with his eyes, but the effort was mostly fruitless.

He had a thought.

“Mind if I touch them?”

Natsume’s eyes widened almost comically. “I don’t – I mean – wouldn’t that hurt you?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been close enough for a while now. I doubt it’d make much of a difference anymore.”

Natsume frowned slightly. “Tanuma…”

“‘Touching a youkai is usually a lot worse than just being near it,’ right?”

Natsume shook his head slowly. “No… Well, yes,” he admitted, “but –”

“How about this, then?”

“What?”

“You go out there and… fly a bit – and if you can do it, you win the right not to worry about whatever happens.”

 _Whatever happens as a consequence,_ he meant; Natsume frowned. He and Tanuma probably both knew that that was hardly the kind of right he wanted. That it wasn’t so easy for Natsume to just brush off his effect on others.

“Besides,” Tanuma added – half joking, half persuasive, “you’re probably giving yourself too much credit, anyway. You’re still at least partially human, so I doubt you’re as strong as that. Plus” – he grinned – “there’s not exactly a lot of malicious energy in you.”

 

Having at least convinced him to head outside with the offer still open, Tanuma was careful about following Natsume. They couldn’t use the circles much outside of Tanuma’s own room, so he flicked the lights on and strained to make out the faint ripple in the air – it looked like the waves of heat you can always see on the worst of summer days. That was all – not as much as Tanuma’d been seeing before, but that kind of thing had always depended on the day, anyway. He still felt something twisting painfully behind his eyes – a pressure, head-aches, a sharp pain in his stomach.

 _That_ depended on the day, too.

He could tell when Natsume reached the door. It seemed to blow open all on its own – very scary-movie, Tanuma thought wryly. If anyone else had been around, that might have been a problem.

He hurried to draw a circle in the first patch of grassless dirt he could reach. It was clumsy and he still couldn’t quite manage it without using the paper Taki had left him with, but it looked like it’d work – and it did, he saw Natsume step hesitantly into it, light eyes wide and concerned.

“I was saying,” he began immediately. “I – you look worse. You weren’t hiding it as well when you – when you couldn’t see me.”

“I’m fine,” Tanuma dismissed. “I was more worried about losing track of you. You’re like a ghost, you know? It’s almost too bad we don’t have time to open up a haunted house or something.” He laughed softly.

Natsume smiled warily. “You don’t have to try so hard to joke like that. You’re tired, right…?”

“Not that tired,” Tanuma said again. “…Do you know how you want to try this?”

Natsume paused. “Shouldn’t be hard…”

“Um,” Tanuma thought. He was almost surprised that Natsume had accepted the change of topic so easily. “Then, maybe work on just moving them a little first?”

“Mm…”

Natsume looked like he was concentrating for a moment. His eyes fell shut and he took slow, deep breaths. The feathers on his back glinted delicately in the light of early morning – and they quivered like they had before but with more purpose, bigger movements as Natsume’s arms twitched loosely at his sides – clumsily mirroring everything his wings did. His right hand curled into a fist.

He relaxed for a moment, then, opened his eyes and glanced sheepishly up at Tanuma.

“I’ve done better than this just accidentally,” he admitted. “I’m still not used to it.”

Tanuma only shrugged.

Cheeks darkening to a startling red, Natsume nodded and reached hesitantly back to touch the appendages himself. “They really are heavy…”

Tanuma came close to suggesting that they do something about the feathers – but he remembered then just what those were meant to do, and he shut up immediately. He would’ve felt wrong cutting at them or anything like that, anyway – they were beautiful, out of place or not – and they couldn’t be sure, either, that it wouldn’t also hurt Natsume –

“Tanuma?”

“I – I don’t know what to do about that,” Tanuma admitted. “Maybe they’re just stiff? Like when you don’t get to stand for a while.”

Natsume’s eyebrows slanted. “Oh…”

He took another slow breath and drew both his hands closer to his chest. One wing twitched and rose again – this time extended almost as far as it seemed capable of going – and then the other followed.

Tanuma stared.

“D-does that hurt?”

Natsume shook his head, amazed. “No – it’s like stretching. I was sort of – I think this is how you’re supposed to do it.”

“Try lowering them,” Tanuma suggested.

Natsume did; the gust of wind he created doing it nearly swept them both off their feet.

Righting himself clumsily, Natsume shook his head and grinned. “Maybe if I – jump?”

Tanuma couldn’t help grinning back. “Maybe…”

As stupidly simple as that sounded, though, it worked – and Natsume managed to stay suspended a good meter or two above the ground for nearly a minute before it got to be too much. He crumpled to the ground, breathless and laughing. His cheeks were flushed a light pink, now, and he looked so pleased with himself that Tanuma automatically moved closer, sat by the circle’s edge and smiled.

“How many people wouldn’t kill to try that just once?” he wondered aloud.

“Yeah,” Natsume agreed, laughter fading. “I know – there are a lot of people out there who wouldn’t hate to wind up like this. Flying – and there’s a whole world that so many people don’t get to see,” he dared to look up and into Tanuma’s eyes. “But it’s not the same. I’m just selfish,” he mumbled, “because I can be a part of both without becoming a youkai myself. I don’t want to lose either one.”

“That’s not selfish. So many people would miss you –”

“I know,” Natsume breathed. “I’d hate that. I feel the same way. It’s just – I keep remembering how I used to feel. Lots of other people feel that way – because humans can be so…”

_Cold._

“I get it.”

“But I really –”

“Yeah. Other people might wish for something like this, but it’s your choice. You’re not wrong to hate it.”

“Would it be wrong to –?”

“What –?”

“Never mind…”

“N-no, I guess – but if you think you’d regret it even a little –”

Natsume offered Tanuma another warm smile. “I definitely would,” he said quickly. “I’m only thinking.”

Tanuma nodded; when Natsume rose to his feet, he followed.

“I’ll really do it this time.”

He nodded again. He stepped back; he watched as Natsume sank into a near crouch, then up onto the balls of his feet and _pushed_ –

– up, his wings moved quickly, easily, purposefully – and with a grace that should have come only from practice, up more –

– he was slipping away, wide-eyed and not sure at all of what to do with the rest of his limbs, the human ones, the sun starting to light up the whole of his wings and his hair and the open-mouthed awe on his face –

– he called back and Tanuma couldn’t hear him anymore.

And then he moved far enough away that he was less visible now, a shimmery heat wave without a well-defined shape. No color, just a breeze. Tanuma felt his stomach churn, and he started to wave Natsume back – his hands in the air and his eyes glued to that blur of motion and indistinct lines – when he realized that it was moving awkwardly now, blown one way and then another by the wind that was even tugging at Tanuma’s own clothes.

He stepped forward, he saw it fall – and then he was running.

He watched and ran and dodged small obstacles – he was so close, as close as the forests surrounding the house. He pinpointed the tree – its branches and leaves were moving more than those of the rest, they shuddered as if something heavy had hit them –

“Natsume! Natsume, hey – Natsume!”

He couldn’t _see_ him –

“Natsume…!”

_There –_

Tanuma collapsed to his knees – ignored the shooting pain of pebbles hidden beneath a fine layer of leaves and dirt – and his hand darted out to feel for _anything_ –

 _“A-ah,”_ he choked. “N-Natsume…”

  _Thank goodness…_

His hand was resting on the soft fabric of a shirt he couldn’t see. He could feel something like warmth spreading beneath that, too, but it was all mixed up with the chill of brisk morning air. And his stomach lurched before he could think to do anything more than call his friend’s name; the forest was starting to tip around him. His head felt too light.

He realized that Natsume was moving dazedly beneath his hand. He took it away, then brought it back and found an arm to help him up – dead weight, half-conscious. He must have hit his head at some point.

“It’s okay,” he heard himself saying. “Just gotta get you back to the house… I can handle…”

 _It’s okay,_ he repeated silently. It was okay – and he searched for arms, legs, oriented himself and pulled his friend limply onto his back. Cringing, he ducked his head to hide the pain in his eyes. His breathing was sloppy and his stomach was rolling over and over even before he managed one unsteady step forward – and another, three four five. He could make it as far as home, he could make it okay…

The illusion of movement at his back again. He bit his lip and managed to get as far as the broken tree trunk he didn’t remember passing – he had to pause to press his shoulder into one that was still standing – but his legs buckled and

he felt Natsume slipping, felt himself slipping and

collapsed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He will be well enough to walk on his own, provided you are nowhere nearby when he wakes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you _mean,_ I haven't updated since January?

His first thought was that a strong wind had come up and thrown him higher – up where the sun shouldn’t have felt so cold, up where he should have somehow caught another gust to carry him farther away – no pain, not the rending back and forth in mid-air, not split-second collisions and limbs torn in every direction.

His second thought was that he was lying on the ground and hurting, that his body and his wings wouldn’t move the way he wanted them to – and his awareness was fading in and out, dazed. His head hurt.

He heard Tanuma’s voice third, heard his first sharp intake of breath and all the ones that followed. The ones that came quicker and quicker – too quickly, the heavy thump and the way the world tilted first and then rolled over with Natsume still a dead weight on Tanuma’s back.

He’d said ‘okay,’ Natsume heard it, but the pained look on his face when Natsume barely managed to drag himself off of his friend’s body – to roll him over and look –

“Because you touched,” he breathed – “I should’ve –”

He dragged himself shakily back, swayed and almost fell as the forest in front of him shivered and blurred. He had to get away, but – no, he had to stay, he couldn’t just leave Tanuma here – but he couldn’t touch him, couldn’t carry him the way Tanuma had done, the idiot –

Could he get help? Would Tanuma be safe here, if it were only for as long as it took to find – who? Nyanko-sensei and Taki were too far away for Natsume to pursue them, and no one else would be able to recognize Natsume’s presence, his voice, his touch. He could shout all day and get nowhere.

“Come.”

Natsume sucked in a sharp breath and turned as quickly as his bruised limbs would allow. The figure in front of him – his startled cry died in his throat. The ayakashi – the deity – from before, white robes and white-blonde hair, long-limbed and graceful and androgynous. Tanuma was as still at Natsume’s side as if the thing had not just appeared, but Natsume spared a quick glance at him, anyway; he could feel it, the overwhelming strength of this being’s energy, and his stomach churned painfully at the thought of what it might do to someone like Tanuma.

Tanuma, who was already sick and hurt and weak. Tanuma, who was all of those things _because of Natsume._

“Shirotobi,” he whispered, voice hoarse and heart hammering. “Was it - was it you?”

The bloodlessly pale lips remained stern. “Come,” it repeated.

Natsume gritted his teeth and threw his arm back over Tanuma’s limp body. He couldn’t cover much of anything like that, but the message he meant to send couldn’t have been much clearer.

“That is a human child,” the white one declared. “You are not the same.”

“I am –!”

“I will not harm it.”

Natsume stilled and glanced quickly at Tanuma. “He’s my friend. I can’t leave him out here where they might not find him later.”

“He will be well enough to walk on his own, provided you are nowhere nearby when he wakes.”

Natsume hesitated again. “…Why do you want me to go with you? Wasn’t this” – and he flexed his wings, cringed at the shock of pain that ran straight to his back and shoulders – “a punishment? What else could you possibly want with me?”

_I don’t want to leave._

“You are seeking a cure,” the Shirotobi said.

Natsume tried to ignore the thrill of hope that struggled desperately against the thick fear coagulating in his mind. He felt heavy all over, inside and out, and his voice sounded thick and indistinct even to him. “I can’t stay this way,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry,” and he didn’t know what he was apologizing for, exactly, but the Shirotobi emanated so much detached apathy that Natsume couldn’t help feeling that it didn’t matter. Empty or full of meaning, his words probably didn’t have the capacity to make any difference here.

He understood nothing of this.

“There is a way, but you are incapable of discovering it. Your human _… friend_ even less so. Come.”

Natsume glanced again at Tanuma; he was quickly losing color, breathing more unsteadily and shivering with cold. He had to get him away from the Shirotobi, away from Natsume – and fast. “I don’t accept that,” he said, “but if I come – will you tell me what it is? And will you let me come back when it’s over?”

The Shirotobi didn’t answer.

And Natsume, for all of his misgivings, accepted that as a response, let it mean what it would. Everything going through his head was mixed up and messed up and foggy – he must have hit it, falling through trunks and branches and finally colliding with hard ground – and he couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t remember what reason he had not to go, if it meant keeping Tanuma safe and maybe, maybe finding a cure to end this whole thing.

He climbed to his feet and let the Shirotobi take his hand, winter-cold and shaking. His chest clenched when he turned to look at the crumpled form sprawled unceremoniously on top of dirt and leaves, but he couldn’t remember _why_ it did. His head didn’t hurt, but its contents felt wrong, distant, alien.

“Be safe,” he whispered, and then he was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natsume was gone.

The disorientation was gone. Tanuma sat up slowly, anyway, and there was nothing like nausea tickling the back of his throat, aching in his stomach. His legs were stiff and sore, but not weak-light and shaking. His head didn’t hurt. The air around him felt cold, but not intolerably so, and he raised his eyes expecting to see something – a tell-tale flicker, a stirring in the leaves, distant noise – but there was nothing like that, either. There was no one sprawled, invisible and unconscious, on top of or to either side of him. No skin, no warmth, no near-painful buzz of energy.

Natsume was gone.

Tanuma knew. He didn’t need the circle he hurried to draw, didn’t need to call as loudly as he did, didn’t need the throbbing silence or Ponta – coming quickly, with Taki in tow and every strand of fur standing on end – to tell him that it was too late to stop his friend.

“What happened?” Taki asked, voice light, and Tanuma bowed his head, said he didn’t know. The flight, the fall, Natsume close enough that Tanuma’s body finally couldn’t handle any more than that.

“I just woke up,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure he was hurt. He needed help –”

“Or a good, solid blow to the head,” Ponta muttered to himself. “Brats.”

“Um –”

“Yes?”

“Better go after him. It won’t be easy without that idiot to give you instructions, but you’ll have to make do.” The little cat turned, eyes still on them, and had barely enough time to tell them both to climb on – “Hurry it up,” he growled – before he disappeared in a sudden flash of just-glimpsed fur and smoke that couldn’t have actually been smoke.

Tanuma caught his breath just in time to avoid crying out. Taki stiffened and turned to look at him with her eyes blown wide. She seemed to be searching for some reassurance that this was actually a good – or, at the very least, a safe – idea. Tanuma didn’t know how to offer that, but he did know how to wear his determination like a mask, and he did, he nodded as he turned and found a fistful of thick fur. Warm. He closed his eyes, tightened his grip, threw one leg over as he pulled himself up, and wondered in a distant sort of way what he must have looked like to Taki, still standing beside them with her hands curled into loose fists. Sitting unsteadily on an invisible giant, his face pale with fear and worry and _they had to hurry, had to find Natsume before it was too late, before he was hurt, before he was trapped._

Taki imitated the quick inclination of Tanuma’s head, her mouth set in a line, and before Tanuma could plead with her to join him, she was already there, fascinated and tense and concerned.

“Is it always like this for Natsume-kun?” she breathed.

“With a little less guesswork, maybe,” Tanuma said, and then he ducked.

Branches and leaves whistled past, scraped at his face – tiny lines, hot and stinging and probably red – and then there was open sky, light bright enough that it had to be glimpsed through narrowed eyes, and Tanuma shouted to be heard.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Taki said. “Where are we going?”

“To search the forest?” Tanuma guessed. He nearly bit his tongue when Ponta took a sudden dive, so that they were close enough to stir the tops of the trees, like any other strong wind. “S-see?”

“But we won’t be able to –”

“We’re here for when Nyanko-sensei finds him. And” – Tanuma squinted through the trees – “to call for him.”

 

 They called until their throats were rubbed raw, their voices hoarse and their limbs heavy with the effort of remaining perched on the back of a youkai who was, at best, just a shimmery patch of translucence over miles of dense forest. They called until their eyes wouldn’t stay open, and the sun was nearing the horizon and the forest was darkening and they’d seen nothing. And then there was Tanuma’s house and they were sinking to the ground nearby, breathless with hope and panic.

They climbed down. When Nyanko-sensei reappeared, there was no mistaking his anger.

Normally, Tanuma would have expected a long and energetic rant. This time, though, all the youkai said was, “That’s just about it.”

“What are you talking about?” Taki gasped. “He’s still out there!”

“And just about out of time,” came the response. “Give up. You did what you could. It’s his fault for wandering off.”

“We can still –”

“Determination can only accomplish so much. Give up,” Ponta repeated, eyes narrowed. “I’ll find the brat and teach him a lesson somehow, but what you want isn’t gonna happen. Really, it’s just bad luck that you two were involved in the first place. Do yourselves a favor; go home and forget about the whole thing.”

Tanuma shook his head, felt it throb from the base of his neck all the way through to the space behind his eyes. His mouth was cotton-dry, but that was okay. He couldn’t think of anything to say, anyway. Taki was trembling hard, tearing up, probably suffering from the opposite problem, but they were both silent – and it didn’t matter.

Did anything? Had anything ever?

“Go on,” the little cat repeated, brandishing a single paw insistently. “It’s over.”

“I want to talk to him,” Tanuma rasped, surprising even himself. He sounded awful. He felt awful. “I want to know –”

“Is he really going to be happy like that? I can’t believe he’d choose to run off – after everything – and I was so close!” Taki’s knuckles were turning white, her nails probably digging tiny crescents into the palms of her hands. “I only needed enough time to find a few more books, like I said, and that’s” – and she was crying now, full, hot tears and her cheeks were flushed and she was still shaking – “that’s why we came looking for Natsume-kun before, isn’t it? Because we’d found something that could turn out to be a solution? He said he’d stay with us, so he should have been there with Kaname-kun! What if something happened to him?!”

The youkai stood staring at the two of them, eyes still narrowed, angry demeanor in place, silent. It occurred to Tanuma that Ponta might’ve been feeling some of the same emotions, masking them the way he sometimes did, swapping disappointment for anger, some kind of sorrow for cold stoicism.  And that only made the aching tightness in his chest suddenly swell into a wave of strong and confused emotion.

“Please,” he agreed. “If it’s too late tonight, at least – you don’t even have to take us out with you, if you can bring him back safe on your own. Just, please. Don’t give up. Don’t ask us to – not on Natsume.”

“Tomorrow,” the fat little cat growled at length. “I’ll bring him to your place” – he glared pointedly at Tanuma, even seemed to spit his words – “before the sun goes down. Have one of your circles ready, and be prepared for the worst. I can’t promise that he won’t have a few extra scratches on him, but he’ll be alive. For all the difference that makes.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They weren't late, not yet. It was fine. They were fine.

_For all the difference that makes._

He didn’t sleep. He lied to his father the next morning, told him he was feeling too sick to go to school – and it was an easy lie to believe, as pale and drawn as he must have looked.

“Again?”

His father had a short trip to make, a routine exorcism for an old woman living just a little farther out of town. He would try to be back by tonight, but it was likelier that the errand would take him until tomorrow morning, at best. Because, well, it was a short trip, but short by local standards wasn’t very short at all, was it? Did Tanuma need a doctor? An exorcism of his own? Would he be alright all by himself?

It was just a headache. “Don’t worry,” Tanuma reassured him, and he felt the irony of the request in every one of his little gestures, from his smile to the lightness of his voice and the too-casual wave he offered as his father sighed and finally left him alone.

He didn’t stop feeling something like dread pooling in the core of his being, couldn’t wash it away with a bath, couldn’t eat it away – couldn’t eat, didn’t have any room for an appetite – until Taki arrived, breathless like she’d run all the way there.

“Not yet?” she said, her own sort of greeting.

Tanuma just shook his head.

They weren’t late, not yet. It was fine. They were fine.

He made tea for the two of them, felt a little better. This was better than being alone to wonder in silence. This was probably as much action as he was capable of taking now. It was better than doing nothing, wasn’t it? Waiting?

“It’s getting late,” Taki said at last, leaning back and sighing. “It has to be soon, right? He promised.”

“Yeah,” Tanuma agreed, and his chest hurt. “He did. Soon.”

“You’re not yourself, either,” Taki commented, almost gloomily. “Cheer up, okay? Natsume-kun might really need that from us.”

Tanuma sat up a little straighter. The pain didn’t vanish – of course it wasn’t that easy, as thorny as his emotions were now – but his head, at least, felt a little clearer. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m sorry, I’m – worried.”

“Me, too,” she sighed. “Of course. Maybe Natsume-kun can’t be human anymore,” and she avoided Tanuma’s eyes, wide and stunned, “but we can still be his friends, can’t we? We can help him. If something happened, I mean. We can – we can at least support him, right? There’s no rule against that? I just want him to be happy, is all. Even if that means that he can’t be with everyone –”

“There’s no way that wouldn’t be hard for Natsume,” Tanuma muttered. “That was the last thing he wanted.”

“Then something’s wrong,” Taki repeated. “I’m willing to spend as much time as I need to to help him figure things out. I owe him at least that much, and I _want_ to help him. As a friend.”

“I do, too,” Tanuma said. “I want an explanation, and I want to finish this right. It wouldn’t be fair to any of us if we left things the way they are now.”

Taki nodded, and they fell clumsily into a tense but companionable silence. Every noise outside set them both glancing around, rising to their feet only to settle back onto the tatami. They spent at least an hour like that. At least two.

And, eventually, Natsume and his sensei _were_ late, the sun had all but disappeared and Tanuma was the first to rise to his feet.

“Let’s go.”

“Go search?” Taki wondered, surprised but already halfway to standing. “In the dark?”

Tanuma turned on his heel and retreated back into the house. He returned with two flashlights in hand, and he was shaking but he was desperate. “This is all I have, and it won’t be enough for me to see Natsume, but if he can see us, maybe that’ll be enough.”

They put their shoes on in a hurry, left a note where they thought Ponta might find it. Left another one for Tanuma’s father, just in case. Gathered up the flashlights and some extra batteries.

And set out at a brisk walk.

It had already cooled down an awful lot for how short a time the sun had been down; they were both wearing light jackets, but that turned out not to be enough to keep the chill out as they moved steadily farther away from the house. Tanuma thought that maybe it was the adrenaline rush, the chase, the hours of anxious waiting making him shiver – or maybe it was just that, the cold. He thought about turning back, getting a coat; who knew if Natsume would need something, too, and just now they couldn’t exactly afford to lose anyone to a sudden fever.

Natsume as a human was weirdly prone to things like that, wasn’t he…?

Tanuma felt that he was going to fall even before his foot met any resistance. He’d been using his flashlight to scan the trees ahead of him, and his throat still hurt a little but he was calling all the same. He was calling, but he didn’t cry out when he hit the ground. He barely felt the impact when it happened.

“Friends of Natsume-sama?”

He glanced up in a hurry, tried to aim his flashlight but found a small hand holding his hand still; the beam was left to shine uselessly into the underbrush just ahead of them. This newcomer must have been pretty strong for its size, then, but Tanuma didn’t get the feeling that the youkai was actually a powerful one in terms of pure spiritual energy. His own body didn’t hurt much worse now than it had moments before, minus a few fall-induced scrapes and bruises. There was no sign of the peculiar brand of pain that had cropped up after close contact with Natsume and his transformed bodyguard.

“Do you know Natsume-sama?”

“Are you searching for him?”

So, there were two. Tanuma realized, faintly, that Taki was hovering beside him, asking if he was alright. He nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak, and just managed to stand up. The youkai let him go, flashlight in hand, but Tanuma turned the flood of artificial light off before he could begin to make anything out. Taki followed suit when he nudged her gently and tapped the light in her hand.

“Yes,” he said, answering the questions of everyone at once. Speaking directly to Taki, he added, “There’s someone here.”

She moved closer to him. “‘Someone?’ A youkai?”

“Two.” Tanuma made a point of staring at a spot where he knew the youkai were not. “Have you seen him recently?”

“Seen him, yes,” one of the youkai answered. Its voice was clear enough, but maybe not as clear as it would have been if Tanuma had what it took to interact with them the way Natsume did.

“He was with that no-good bodyguard of his,” the other added. “And a scary-looking youkai.”

“No, no, that was a god, specifically! A god!”

“Fighting Madara!” the other said, elaborating on the other’s statement without actually acknowledging it. “Can you help Natsume-sama?”

Tanuma’s heart seemed to skip a beat. “Fighting a – where? Are they far away? Can you lead us there?”

“No, no, no, no!” the two cried, in unison. The one with a deeper voice continued, “It’s too dangerous for low-level youkai like us! If you keep going straight, you should find them in a spot without many trees! It’s not far, even for a human!”

“We won’t know if we’ve found them! Please –”

“Good luck, then!” came the farewell – he knew that was what it was, given how quickly it faded more fully into background noise before vanishing entirely. They were alone again and he felt it, shivering and apparently more pressed for time than he’d originally thought.

“Straight ahead,” Tanuma supplied when Taki pointedly cleared her throat. “They won’t lead us there, but they said we’re close enough already. Natsume’s with Ponta, and he’s – they’re with the youkai that did this to Natsume. Ponta’s fighting it.”

Taki was already moving past him. “Okay,” she said, voice quivering. “Then we can’t waste any time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal is to have the last two or three chapters of this posted inside of a week and a half. Thanks for reading! ;D


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But it was _Natsume,_ Natsume brimming with emotions in his words, life in his eyes and epiphanies on his lips.

When, at some point, Tanuma and Taki emerged together into a large clearing, several things happened very quickly.

A gale-force wind nearly drove them back into the trees; they both took a startled step back on their own when they registered the out-of-place warmth the gust carried with it.

But that wasn’t the first thing. It wasn’t even the second thing.

The first thing was the light. It looked like it could have come from a full and unobstructed moon, running in rivulets like water or lava, only still, so that there was a solid boundary between the dark forest and the bright, grassy area that formed a perfect circle within it. Beyond that circle, Tanuma had seen no light, no faint glow or sign of life. And in a way it made him feel better, because it wasn’t for lack of searching that they hadn’t seen this place – it was that they _couldn’t_ see it, because that was the point. Because this wasn’t a shield or something as simple as running away; it was camouflage. It was a hiding place.

The second thing, plainly visible despite the absence of any now-familiar pattern on the ground below him, was Natsume.

Taki’s muffled cry alerted Tanuma to the fact that she could see it, too – the figure with its knees drawn close to its chest, big, dark wings folded at its sides, head lowered. Natsume was perfectly still – like the light surrounding him – pale, apparently unharmed. No sign even of the scratches he should have had after his fall the day before. Tanuma couldn’t see his face; he was sitting like a child trying to hide tears, but there was no telltale sound to prove that that was the case, either.

Then the sudden explosion of strong wind, and Tanuma still had no idea what was happening.

Danger or no danger, Taki barely beat him to Natsume’s side. He hesitated to put his hand on his shoulder, but Taki wasn’t worried about repercussions; she reached out and touched Natsume, lightly at first – but Natsume didn’t react, didn’t so much as breathe differently, so she grabbed him and shook him gently.

“Natsume,” Tanuma breathed. “Hey.” He wondered why he couldn’t seem to process anything Taki was saying. She looked scared, confused, even hurt. Natsume looked indifferent.

Tanuma found his voice again. “Natsume, we’re taking you home.”

“His home is here.”

Before Tanuma could gather himself enough to turn around, it was there in front of the three of them, behind Natsume – its hand sheet-white and resting pointedly on Natsume’s shoulder, where Taki’s hand had been before.

“N-no. It’s –”

“If he were human,” the youkai – the god, the one responsible, it made the hair on the back of Tanuma’s neck stand on end – said, “his home would be with you. If he had been born normal, his home would have been with other humans. He would not be here.”

Tanuma opened and closed his mouth. His head felt light, too light, and Taki was talking directly to him this time. He couldn’t make the words out, but he understood the tone of her voice well enough. He must’ve been looking pretty bad, for her to sound that panicked.

Someone else spoke. Tanuma closed his eyes and tried to listen, but it was too faint; he couldn’t hear.

Something soft nudged his hand, and he glanced down at it in surprise. It was Ponta, eyes narrowed and mouth set in a line. This time, he heard what was being said to him, albeit distantly.

“I may have miscalculated,” Ponta said. “This god isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Natsume…?” Tanuma rasped, surprising even himself with the weakness of his voice. And oh, god, his head hurt.

“Not what you were expecting? Makes three of us.”

“Is he okay?”

“Depends on who you ask. Not that the kid’s got a lot to say.” Ponta jerked his head at the youkai where it was still standing over them. “Don’t bother trying to take him by force. The fight’s too exhausting to be worth it, and if I can’t manage it, I can guarantee that you wouldn’t –”

“I won’t lay a finger on any of you,” the youkai, the Shirotobi interrupted. Ponta bristled and twisted his little body around to face the being. “Simply cease meddling with problems that do not concern you.”

“Like I said,” Ponta growled, bristling, “it concerns respectable youkai like me who’ve already staked a claim on him!”

“No longer,” they answered.

“It isn’t about ownership, anyway!” Taki cried. “Natsume’s just Natsume! But he’s acting like – like he’s not!”

“Little of him remains to justify the name,” the Shirotobi said. “The change comes slowly, but it comes.”

“You’d know,” Ponta drawled, “I imagine. Not fond of your godly status?”

Their next reply came more slowly. It was the first time Tanuma had seen any visible hesitation in the still, nearly emotionless contours of the deity’s face. Finally, there was a hushed sigh and the Shirotobi said, “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” Ponta said. He was scowling a little. “Pathetic” – he glanced at Natsume, who had let his arms fall to his sides, extended his legs so that his knees were now a short distance from his chest, and raised his head to reveal a face more void of expression than the Shirotobi’s – “and you, too. You’re worse.”

“What – what are you talking about?” Tanuma said, and bit his lip to steady himself. Natsume had turned just enough to look at Tanuma; he was watching him now with an apathy that entirely lacked anger or humor. Or anything Tanuma was used to seeing in Natsume even at the worst of times.

But sadness – that, Tanuma thought, was definitely still there, only muted. It was like hearing a cry for help through gallons upon gallons of water and distance.

He forced himself not to look away; Natsume even returned the favor.

“That’s no god,” Ponta said. “Just some poor sap of a human, something like Natsume, here. Got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, was noticed for their spiritual energy and attacked, and forgot everything pretty quickly – that they were ever human to begin with, even.” He spat. “I would have appreciated the tip earlier, but what can you do, working with youkai like the ones around here? So many conflicting stories make their way around, it’s incredible anyone can keep a single one of ‘em straight.”

Taki asked before Tanuma could, but the words didn’t matter. She hadn’t let Natsume’s shoulder go, and Tanuma refused to avert his gaze – the only way they knew how to ground themselves and their friend, and it didn’t seem to be making any difference at all to Natsume.

The Shirotobi looked about as surprised as they were probably capable of looking. Ponta watched them as he said, “It may function like a disease, if you could call it that – letting others take your place as the so-called Shirotobi when the opportunity presents itself. It’s still hard to say whether or not it can be stopped once it’s started, but it seems like the change can only be completed upon a second meeting. Lucky for this one” – he brandished his head at the Shirotobi – “Natsume was right there waiting to be picked up. The kid hardly had a choice about leaving with ‘em.”

“What happens? They just – trade places? Could Natsume trade with me?”

“Hah,” Ponta laughed. “Not with the power you’ve got. Natsume may not be particularly strong physically, but he can at least handle being near high-level youkai – and that’s the only kind of strength that makes a difference in a case like this.” Probably seeing the panic tangible in Tanuma’s face, he added, “Best to stop it before he’s all gone, if you can manage that. I doubt the transition back from a completed change is as smooth as you think it is, anyway. Plenty could be lost that a simple magic trick like this wouldn’t rebuild.”

Natsume’s breath caught.

They all heard it – even the Shirotobi, bleached of color and expression, pale, beyond categorization – and they could all see it in the being’s face, in the sadness. Maybe even fear, maybe even desperation or panic or loneliness.

Tanuma had no choice but to ignore that.

“Natsume,” he breathed, joining Taki in tugging at the loose sleeves of his friend’s borrowed shirt. “It isn’t too late! I – maybe we don’t have any definite way to help you remember who you are, but you can do it yourself.” He couldn’t tell, exactly, but Natsume seemed to move slightly in response to that; his head, or maybe his arms – a tiny tremor, at best. Tanuma moved just a little bit closer and earnestly said, “If just having your friends nearby will get you back, we’ll wait as long as you need.”

This time, he was sure that Natsume moved, and it was his lips. Not a silent word, barely a breath – just a little motion, a gentle parting.

Ponta disappeared. Tanuma thought he saw, from the corner of his eye, a great, snow-white, wolf-like thing take his place, but he didn’t manage to see for sure before the Shirotobi likewise seemed to blur out of existence. And then there was a strong wind, warm like the one from before, and he tasted electricity in the air.

“They’re fighting,” Taki breathed. “Natsume-kun, can you see them?” She nudged his side. “Please, come on! If you just wake up, we can try to stop them before your kitty gets hurt!”

“We’ll figure out a way to keep you visible,” Tanuma pleaded. “You don’t have to be technically human to be one in all the ways that matter, Natsume. And we can see you right now even without a circle!”

“We want _you_ back, Natsume-kun! Your personality and memories and smile! Wings or no wings.”

Tanuma cleared his throat. Only Taki could have said it like that, he thought. Maybe neither of them could say anything exactly right, but the honesty had to be helping.

Natsume raised a hand, blindly, and someone said something in a muted voice behind Tanuma. Everything around them went still.

“Lonely…”

“What?” Taki said. Tanuma looked around for the invisible pair of combatants. They both knew that voice, though not well.

“Yes, I’m – I may be lonely,” the Shirotobi said, and there they were, directly in front of the group of three. Their apathy had faded into painfully blatant melancholy, and their eyes were on Natsume. “I believe he feels the same.”

Not normally, Tanuma wanted to scream, not when he’s himself. He has us and he’s friends with the youkai – some of them – and he’s coming out of his shell more and more all the time. He smiles honestly so much more these days, or he did, before – before –

“N-no.”

Taki and Tanuma both jumped. Natsume was looking down at his lap, his eyes nearly closed. His voice was still hollow and quiet when he said, “Not the same.”

They both called to him. Tanuma thought he heard someone else’s voice, too, deep and booming – Ponta? He looked up expecting to see that wolf-like youkai again, but he was stopped by a wrenching gasp as Natsume – the center of Tanuma’s attention again – doubled in on himself, forming a ball on the glowing forest floor. His eyes were shut tight, now, and they all called and called to him, almost yelling, they were so used to it already, and they tried to shift Natsume’s right wing over to relieve it of his weight.

They were forced to jump back when the wings swept suddenly outward, when Natsume scrambled upright and reached for the feathers with a sharp cry. His wings were quivering, twitching and flexing.

“It – ahhh – S-Sensei … Taki – Tanuma. I – sorry, I –”

“Hold his arms down,” Ponta said urgently, his voice suddenly and entirely recognizable. Tanuma didn’t spare half a second to marvel at the cat’s unprefaced reappearance; he and Taki guided Natsume’s arms down with force enough that Natsume could only weakly resist, and his wings were all shadow and mist, huge, shaking – and Ponta was shouting at him to stay calm, to focus on his friends’ hands, on the voices around him.

There wasn’t any more room for questions – only waiting, Natsume struggling and gasping for breath and crying out and _it wasn’t supposed to hurt him._ This had to be as bad as the pain of the wings’ first emergence, a physical expression of the thing done to him by a passing youkai. This wasn’t _fair._

The light grew brighter. It flashed outward in a ring from Natsume, washing away color and lines until the only thing left was a painfully bright whiteness; Tanuma had to close his eyes, and when he found that he could open them again, he saw

Natsume

blinking back tears, his eyes trained not on his friends but on the space above and behind them. The shirt he’d borrowed from Tanuma lying torn and – somehow – singed, crumpled around his waist while his back was –

– but there was nothing there, only Natsume’s shaking, sweat-damp shoulders and the forest behind him, unobstructed –

“I don’t feel that way,” he breathed, and his voice was exhaustion-thin and weak but it was _Natsume,_ Natsume brimming with emotions in his words, life in his eyes and epiphanies on his lips. “Not anymore,” and he looked at Taki, at Tanuma, at his so-called sensei and he smiled, still through tears, and said, “I felt… _you._ Your loneliness. And mine, from before” – he was back to looking at the Shirotobi – “Is there any other way for you to go back?”

The Shirotobi hesitated. Just for a moment.

“There is not,” they said. “Not now.”

Natsume drew a sharp breath and tried with limited success to sit more fully upright. It looked like he could barely keep his eyes open, let alone move any of his – remaining, his human – limbs very far. “I thought I saw… something – your name? How old are you?”

“It matters n–”

“My – my grandmother, Reiko-san, did you – did you meet her? Someone who looked like me?”

“Reiko,” Tanuma repeated. He knew the name, but this – this was something Natsume had always hidden, before. He turned to Ponta, who just scowled and raised an eyebrow at Natsume.

“No point in trying to hide it now, I guess. Reiko was a human – this brat’s relative – who had the same power as he does. To be fair, though, she did also have more fighting ability to back it up. Used to challenge various youkai for their names, which hold a special power and, in another’s possession, can essentially place them under that being’s control. Natsume’s got the book full of the names of everyone Reiko ever fought. And he refuses to put it to proper use, I might add.” He glared at Natsume. “But giving those back takes more out of you than you have to give, and you know it. Don’t be a fool.”

Tanuma’s eyes widened. “Natsume, you can’t –”

Natsume shook his head. “I have to help. They could still go back, somehow – to the way things were for them. They lost someone, and – I think it might be too late to see that person alive, but – if they had their name. If I could give them that power back, they might remember. You have to be reminded and” – he paused to draw several slow breaths – “a-at least move on. But it – it has to be as soon as possible, or…”

“She was strong,” the Shirotobi interjected, and Natsume smiled again – something quiet and fond and relieved. “She seemed to know more about me than I did, myself. A strange child.”

“She must’ve guessed that having your name returned to you might provide enough of an energy boost to break you out of that curse,” Ponta said. “Reiko always was oddly insightful for a human.”

“Sensei,” Natsume said. “Sorry, but could you take all of us back home? If we can get the book, I –”

Ponta sighed loudly, effectively cutting off the beginnings of another protest from Tanuma and Taki – both of whom were looking at Natsume in a dizzying combination of shock and relief and fear and confusion.

“Let’s get it done fast, at least,” he said. “The rest of us’ll have to make sure you don’t kick it when you’re finished.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go!


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was unconscious already, his hands loosed from the prayer-like pose he’d taken with them, his cheeks pale, still falling along the path he’d set for himself.

Both of the Fujiwaras were still awake when they found Natsume’s house; it wasn’t hard to see the stray lights lit in a single room on the first floor. When he saw the faint glow, Natsume mumbled something worriedly from his spot between his two friends – they’d had to hold him upright through most of the short flight back. Just getting him onto Ponta’s back had been hard. Keeping him from falling was downright terrifying, especially when their surroundings consisted mostly of pitch darkness and a few stars.

Tanuma breathed a shaky sigh of relief when his feet touched solid ground (or, as it happened, the roof outside Natsume’s window). Taki helped Natsume down behind him, and then the two youkai – two and not three, Tanuma thought, looking at Natsume, and that alone was enough to validate the relief he was feeling – joined them.

Small blessings: the window was not only unlocked, but opened just wide enough to let a cool draft into the room.

Natsume managed to reach it alone and without falling over, but he was breathing too hard for the feat to be considered anything less than incredible.

“I’ll go in alone,” he mumbled. “So they don’t hear. We should take it a little farther away.”

No one stopped him. Tanuma turned to see the Shirotobi staring single-mindedly at Natsume as he guided the window the rest of the way open and slipped inside. They didn’t look away until Natsume was back among them, smiling and trembling like he’d just run several miles.

Tanuma turned to Ponta in the instant before he disappeared again. “Are you sure we can let him do this now? He can barely stand!”

The voice that answered him was the deep, vaguely-familiar one from before.

“He’ll live. Probably get sick again, though.”

Tanuma’s stomach tightened. It wasn’t anything new, seeing Natsume do that kind of thing to himself over and over again for the youkai he was always happening across, but knowing it now – and being able to guess, based on the circumstances, that this one time would almost certainly be harder on Natsume’s body – it was almost too much for Tanuma to stand back when, at last, they landed again in a relatively lonely spot a good distance from Natsume’s home.

Natsume must have been able to sense that, though, because he made a point of climbing off of Nyanko-sensei on his own as they slowed to a stop – and then he turned back to his friends and smiled warmly, if still a bit tiredly.

(But it was still so hard to see, what did Tanuma know? There were probably more adverbs than he knew that could have described that smile.)

“Sorry about this,” Natsume said, and one of his hands wandered toward his back, his shoulder-blades, his uninterrupted skin. “I’ll be back at school with you as soon as I can. I promise.”

“Within a week,” Tanuma retorted. “Can you promise that?”

Natsume seemed to flinch. “I have to do this.  I – it would be better if you didn’t have to see. It’s not something you should be involved in” – he paused, his voice cracking, and then resumed speaking with a different tone – “but I guess there’s no point saying that, is there?”

There was a smile evident in Taki’s voice. “I’d rather know than not.”

“Me, too,” Tanuma said. “Natsume.”

“Yes?”

“One week. Take care of yourself; that’s how you can return the favor.”

To his surprise, Natsume laughed. Still warm, still tired. Still so many other things.

“Mm. I promise.”

 

Natsume didn’t see the Shirotobi disappear. He was unconscious already, his hands loosed from the prayer-like pose he’d taken with them, his cheeks pale, still falling along the path he’d set for himself when he threw his head back; Taki didn’t catch him, but the Shirotobi did – guided his limp form to the grass at their feet and stood looking down. The pain in Tanuma’s head all but faded in that moment, when the surreal quality and colorlessness vanished with whatever had made the being in front of them the force of nature it had been.

A ghost. That was what they felt like now.

“When he wakes up, please thank him for me,” they said. Their eyes were brown, their lips pink. “And tell him he’s done well. I remember, it took me much longer to find something like what he has here, and it didn’t last – you can see why.” They shook their head. “I can feel the time that’s passed, but now I remember so little of it after that day.”

“Natsume-kun will remember for you,” Taki said with a shy smile. “I think he knows things like his grandmother did. That’s how he knew what to do to help. He saw.”

“I know the feeling,” they laughed. “I’m familiar with it, and many like it.”

“Thank you,” Taki murmured. “Thanks for letting him go. And for letting him do this for you.”

Tanuma could only nod his agreement, as though the non-sequitur had passed him by unnoticed.

And the once-was-Shirotobi, the brown-eyed, pink-lipped ghost of a person, nodded their own agreement – a farewell, a thanks, and good luck – and then there was nothing, just a turn of their head and an empty space, pitch darkness and a few little lights like stars.

And Tanuma knew, somehow, that he would continue to wonder about them for years, if only every now and then.

 

“She cried, you know.”

“I – I didn’t! Not that much!”

“And this one, too” – Nyanko-sensei lifted one leg to deal Tanuma an awkward punch in the side – “though maybe not quite as much.”

Tanuma sat up a little straighter. “N-no – just because I never thought” – he glanced at Natsume, sitting upright in his futon and grinning at Tanuma like he hadn’t just  been asleep for the better part of three days – “I didn’t think we could get you back, just like that. It all felt too fast, or – or too easy, and then you still managed to do something that incredible on top of it all –”

Natsume raised a hand defensively. “It’s nothing incredible. It’s not even that tiring most of the time. I can’t believe I actually slept this long…” He sighed. “I still have so much explaining to do.”

“I helped provide water the whole time,” Ponta interjected proudly. “All three days. And you were as good as dead to the world through most of it. It was pathetic!”

Natsume frowned at the little youkai, but when he spoke it was to thank him. “I couldn’t have done it without you, sensei.”

“How were your parents?” Taki wondered.

“Oh – well, mad,” Natsume admitted. “I won’t be going on any more… solo camping trips for a while… and, uh, they said to tell you to keep – ugh.”

Tanuma laughed. “What?”

“K-keep an eye on me?” Natsume said, his cheeks turning pink as he hurried to explain. “I promised I’d bring it up, so – but you don’t actually have to –”

“That isn’t something we need to be told to do,” Taki said with a reassuring smile. “Do the same for us, too, okay, Natsume-kun?”

“Right,” he mumbled, ducking his head. His friends exchanged an amused look just out of his line of sight.

“You’ll be back at school soon, won’t you? The work’s really piling up.”

“Don’t remind me…”

Taki laughed. “You can do it. We’ll help.”

“I’ll probably need it,” Natsume agreed. He glanced at his hands, then, and looked back up at the other two. “But – really,” he started, shy again, “I just want to say… thanks. Again” – and he even bowed a little, with his hands clenched around the comforter in front of him, maybe searching for stability to counter the lingering weakness in his body – “I’ve caused so much trouble lately. Thank you so much. I – I can’t even imagine losing what I have here.”

“You won’t,” Tanuma said – right as Taki said it, smiling, on the verge of tears and reaching to touch Natsume’s shoulder.

And there was no pain, no flinching, no second-guessing – just a place in both worlds, a connection, ill-formed and awkward but functional.

“You’ll always belong somewhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! It took literal ages to gradually get it all the way done, but here we go!


End file.
